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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 6236157" data-attributes="member: 52734">Heh - I was going to post my original answer, which was running around waving my hands "The Gamers are coming! The Gamers are coming!" - partly because that's part of what I do.I tend to frontload a lot of my planning; I tend to find that once the game is going I'm too involved with other stuff to have adequate time to plan things between games.My planning often involves a flip through a few supplement books or monster manuals for something to excite me.  I try to find at least 2 such items, then mash them together into a "what if" sort of scenario as the endgame.  I then start working backward along the storyline for modules or adventures that would fit the theme.  I try to set at least 3 base paths for the group to follow at each point and try to keep each point from being dependent on the next (but have consequences follow them from each decision point.An example:[sblock]Some time back, I watched a movie called "The Warriors" - inspired by the greek story of Xenophon and the 10,000 warriors.  I'd also recently seen Frank Miller's 300.  If you're not familiar with the Warriors, it's follows a New York's gang tribulation to return to its home turf after an attempt to unify the city's gangs goes horrible south and the "heroes" are blamed for the death of the coalition's leader.  300, of course is about the 300 Spartans that stood against Xerses 10,000 Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae.  I wanted a D&D game that had the bad-assery of 300, and the "on the run" theme of the The Warriors.So, I knew that the character's main enemy was going to be a rival party that leveled with them.  Since I wanted the party to be able to have a running battle against the bad guys, I expanded the idea from a rival party to a band of mercenaries.  Thus the party itself would be part of a mercenary group - the last survivors of said group, who had the truth of what had happened with them.  They just had to get home to prove it.  I'm getting ideas of the mercenary companies of Italy - large warbands of 100+ warriors who fight for other rulers for profit.With that in mind, I needed to come up with adventures.  Since the party would be starting out at 1st level, I figured the first couple of adventures would be warm-ups.  Adventure number one should set expectations - the party is going to be part of a mercenary band, so I figured it would be a good idea to have a mock war against the other mercenary bands.  Now, I didn't want to have to worry with running the likes of a 100+ man army on each side, so I'm thinking that I could have them be noobs who are left to guard the baggage train while the veterans go fight - and they get to observe from a nearby hill.  I could then have them be heroes by saving the baggage train by a surprise attack by the opposing army's noobs.I figured the next few adventures would be ones at home - establishing a reason for the party to want to eventually return here.  Don't want to spend too much time here, so say, two quick one-to-two night adventures.  In the first, I want the party to do something to cement their positions as heroes - they need to rescue someone or something.  Let's say that the other mercenary company decides to get revenge for their loss at the war game and steals some prize horses from the party's mercenary camp - and its up to the party to go retrieve them after they've been released in goblin-infested woods.  The second is an adventure that should threaten what they've gained.  Let's say one of the veterans, while out and about for the wargames, got bit by a werewolf.  Now that he's come back to town, he's turned evil, has come to specifically hate the PCs, and is out to blame them for a series of brutal murders that he commits.Normally, I'd develop two other lines for the above to give the party some leeway in which direction they want to go - and different rewards depending on the paths they take.  For breviety's sake (hah!), I'm just going to move on to the next section.In the second part, I want to give the characters some chance to travel, get away from home and see some of the dangers of the world that they will be facing.  So part 2 has the group begin their true mercenary career, traveling to the yearly war against the Orc hordes of the west.  In this particular campaign, I want to gloss over the travel to the war, but give a clear picture of how different the "civil" lands are from the borderlands.  The first adventure will pick up after a summary of the group's travel when they arrive to pitch camp in the burned-out ruins of a town on the borderlands.  The town is bisected by a river, with the party's mercenary company on one side and the orcs on the other.  The leaders need intel on the orc held side, and it wouldn't hurt if the party caused a little mayhem while they are there.  So, adventure one is letting the party slip by whatever means best suits them to the other side and finding out what they can about the orc set-up and causing as much mayhem as they can get away with.  Adventure 2 starts with the party's return and dissemination of the intel.  Based on what is found, the mercenary company makes a plan to strike or hold, and the party is in the middle of the fight.  The party has to advance or hold and after a specified time, will be relieved by other mercenary companies that arrive to join the fight.  It will eventually be up to the party to defeat the enemy warlord and halt the green tide.  Adventure 3 will consist of mop-up missions to give the party loot and XP.  At the end of the adventure, they find their warband called to undertake a mysterious journey into the blasted wastes of the Southlands.The third part of the campaign set up for the big "twist" and start of the main game.  The first adventure in this section has the party travel the wastes acting as point scouts, giving them some insight to the dangers of this nomadic land.  At the end of the adventure, the party reaches a foreign, middle-eastern city where they discover other warbands are already gathering outside the city.  In the second adventure of this portion, the party gets to investigate the city and the other warbands, making alliances, gathering enemies and trying to learn more about why they are there.  In the third part, the Grand Alliance with the Caliph of the city is revealed when it actually backfires - the Caliph is murdered and his Suzeran accuses one of the warbands of killing him!  The adventure ends with the members of the alliance scattered and the party blamed as assassins in the Caliph's murder.The fourth part is the heart of the campaign with the party attempting to clear their name and get back home safely.  This will consist of several adventures.  The first will be an "escape" adventure where the party has to get away from their accusers.  The next adventure will focus on the party discovering the truth of the Caliph's murderer - The Suzeran, of course, with the aid of one of the other treacherous warbands.  The following adventure is the party's pursuit by the Suzeran's forces and the treacherous mercenaries until they find a safe haven.  The fourth and last adventure brings the characters back home and turns the table on the Suzeran and his forces.[/sblock]Whew!  Of course, the next thing to do is to start fleshing out this outline - doing stuff like getting/drawing a map of the home base, drawing/acquiring an overland map and hunting/building the individual adventures.  Since this has so much custom, unorthodox D&D stuff going on, I'd doubt I'd find D&D modules that would fit.  One does come to mind that could be tweaked - Ghost Tower of Iverness - which could be used as a bastion where the characters use the Soul Gem at its heart to learn who the true murderer is.  I'd look over other material I have to see where I could pull an encounter, NPC or maybe even an adventure or two to fill in what I have.</blockquote>

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